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Do not try this at home. It’s entirely made up, and honestly, probably impossible. Please suspend your disbelief for this monster fucker book. It’s a book about fucking mermen. Let’s not get into a scientific conversation about whether the bends would happen or if she could die doing half the stuff she does. K? K. *smooches*
A monster hovered in front of the glass. His black tail, so long it tangled in the kelp, was at least ten feet long. Blue slashes of fins, so deep they blended in with the water, undulated all along the black scales. It stretched up to his waist, seamlessly turning into that pale, almost gray skin. His body was as all the rumors claimed. So handsome it was painful to look at, and eerily like the gold sculptures that surrounded her.
Dark claws on his hands were intimidating enough, but it was his black eyes that felt like they’d somehow captured her soul. Black, entirely. Inky and dark, they stared straight through her as though she was nothing. Just a maggot wriggling beneath him. Long dark hair floated around him, perhaps waist length, although there were thick cords interspersed through the strands, much thicker than her own, almost like tentacles.
Why was she frozen here staring at him, terrified, when she should be running?
As she stared into his gaze, she wondered why there was so much hatred in those eyes.
Hate like this burned through a person for years before it ever got this hot. He wanted to murder her, and he didn’t care if anyone would miss her. She could see all of that in his angry gaze.
“Sorry, you pretty bastard. Better luck next time.”
He’d never mistake the shape of her body. He’d had her pressed against his chest, her tiny hands skating over his gills even though he thought she had been unaware of the intimate touch. And this was... her.
She might not know it yet, but that achromo was his. And he intended to take her.
He was beautiful, she thought. If she died here, she was grateful that it was at the hands of something like him.
It was such a shame that this achromo had given into her fear. He liked her better when she was brave.
And he much preferred her like this. With her face bared for him to see, and her eyes slightly squinted in the saltwater.
She was... lovely. Damn it. He hadn’t wanted to think about it, but she really was.
She was a rare and delicate creature, if a little ugly, and he had captured her.
His nature screamed that he had claimed her. This woman was his. He’d hunted her. He’d bested her. And now, she was his to do with as he wished.
“I have seen what your people do in the dark. The movements might be strange, but the sounds your kind make are intriguing to me. I wish to explore this body of yours, Mira.”
Again, her breath caught, and he found himself obsessed with the sound.
“I’m an engineer, undine. I’ve been burned, hit, and trapped in engines more times than I can count. I’ve got calloused hands and tough bones. Do your worst.”
No one would take Mira from him, not this soon, not when she had just ignited the spark of interest in his chest.
“I will carry you,” he murmured, wrapping one of his arms around her back and drawing her closer to him. “Let me keep you warm, Mira.”
He couldn’t trust himself to speak. He’d say something foolish, like beg her to give him permission to discover more about her body. To see beyond the silver suit that covered her from head to toe. He wanted to know what that little hollow on her belly was, or what was between the split of her twin tails.
There was so much about her that he didn’t know. So much that he wanted to discover.
She could do whatever she wanted if he could stay right here for a little while longer.
Wasn’t that just like a man to think food would fix her bad mood?
“That touch as well. It has meaning, achromo. I know you do not know it, but that touch boils my blood.”
He wanted to bite down on her neck. To grip her hips and pull her back against him, as he would have done with one of his own kind.
Unlike his own kind, she was the softest thing he’d ever touched. And, oh, he wanted to look.
“When I first saw you, I was certain you were monstrous. Your people are so different from my own kind. With your two tails and your strange, white eyes, there was nothing I thought I could find tempting about you. But then, every day that you have been with me, I have found something new to admire.”
“The graceful sway of your hips. The way your eyelids widen and then droop halfway closed when I do something you like. I wish to touch all of you. To find every part of your body that makes you gasp or hiss. I want to know the sounds that come out of your mouth when I pleasure you. When you realize that the ocean itself would guide me into you, and set a pace that neither of us could deny. My people believe that lovemaking is the purpose of the sea.”
“I can smell how excited you are,” he groaned. “I draw that scent into my gills and tuck it underneath my scales for times when I am not by your side. Kairos, Mira, I grow so weary of seeking release in my hand.”
“You, who are so tempting and so new, forget that you have destroyed so much.”
“I have thought a long time about what I would like you to hear me say first. A part of me wishes there were kinder words I could say. That I could tell you how rapturous it is to see you swim through my world and to see you love it as much as I do. Or perhaps I would remark on the way your hair looks like blood underneath the water and that stirs some feral part of me. But what I settled on, the first most important words you must hear from me, are that I am deeply sorry.”
“You are not a monster,” she whispered. “You are not what they told me you were. I accepted your apology long ago, Arges, even before you were able to speak it out loud. You have done what you had to do. For your people. Because of our history. And I will not, ever, hold that against you.”
“We’ve been talking to each other for quite some time now. Just not in so many words.”
Outside of the home, he’d found two skeletons. One that was clearly of her people, the bones of her legs had been eerily interesting. And laid out next to her were the bones of one of his own kind. A massive male, with a tail nearly twice as long as Arges’s, speaking of his age and power. They had been curled up next to each other, almost as though the sea didn’t even dare move their skeletons. Together, even in death.
Maybe she should have been looking at the ocean itself. She should have been enjoying the dim spears of sunlight that were drifting away as the clouds grew over their heads. Or perhaps she should have been enjoying the sensation of the water through her hair and the warmth of the waves that weren’t too cold for her to stay in them for once. Instead, all she could do was stare down at him.
“I prefer my time with you, Arges. Much more than anyone else I’ve ever met in my life. I want to know everything about you, even if those discoveries come without words.”
“I think you should know that I want you. I find you strangely beautiful, and though that has plagued me for quite some time, I feel that now perhaps it is the right time for me to tell you.”
She was his. His to take, to steal, to kiss.
He had only wanted her more. Wanted to dig himself into her skin and coil around her heart until he was wrapped so firmly around it that he knew it would only beat for him.
“Having you in my arms is the most comfortable I’ve ever been.”
“For us, it is a fleeting but crucial moment. An ephemeral rightness of time and place. A moment that brings you to where you were supposed to be.”
brought her hand to first one, then the other. “One beats for my people, and it will never stop beating for them. But the other beats for you, Mira. I’m sorry it took me such a long time to realize that.”
“My brothers want me to return you to your city or kill you.” He covered her hand with his own, holding her tight against him. “But I have no intention of letting you go, Mira. You have captured my heart, stolen it just as you have my attention and my time. I cannot let you go. I would be denying my heart the reason it beats.”
Fuck, she was in love with an undine.
“Let me be your breath.”
love you,” she said, her voice so quiet he almost didn’t hear it. “I love you so much, Arges. I don’t want to die without you knowing that.”
“The life of my mate, Melete.”
“You stay alive for me. Do you hear me, Mira? Fight. You have to fight like you’ve never fought before.”
“You hold my soul, kairos. Keep it safe for me.”
